Hong Kong Vs. The Mainland – An Outside Perspective

The cause of many a fight between me and my own brother in our youth. They were also handy for fighting with - when we fought about other things.

It’s funny the things that siblings fall out over, one minute you’re the best of friends and the next you’re beating the heck out of each other over a plastic lightsaber. Or at least that’s how it was in our house when we were growing up, I’d wind up my little brother until, in a fit of rage, he tried to tear my head off. But this may be the first time a country has fought with itself over a bowl of noodles.

In the past week or so, Hong Kong and the Mainland have been engaged in the kind of sibling strife better suited to brothers behind closed doors. It started on a tube (subway) with a mainlander stuffing down a bowl of noodles, you’re not allowed to eat on the subway in Hong Kong (with good reason, it makes for poor hygiene and some of the things people eat really don’t smell nice to other passengers either) so someone stepped in to remonstrate. So far, so normal, right?

A snapshot from the notorious video - when the noodle eater began to get angry when someone remarked; "Typical mainland behaviour".

But then it turns out that someone else was recording the incident with one of those ubiquitous mobile phone cameras that everyone carries now. The video ended up as these things do, on a file sharing site – and it’s been watched a lot. The Hong Kong Chinese have been using it to berate their Mainland counterparts for a perceived lack of manners , culture and a rule-breaking attitude and the Mainlanders in turn have pointed out that they feel it speaks volumes about the contempt they are shown by their island brothers.

Then a survey comes out – showing that fewer Hong Kong people identify themselves as Chinese now than when they lived under British rule. This causes an angry lecturer from a top Mainland University to denounce all islanders as “dogs” – he then offers a prompt but not very convincing apology reducing the number of people he thinks are “dogs”, to just those Hong Kong citizens who won’t learn Putonghua (Mandarin to you and me).

And here's the nutty professor getting stuck in - insulting 7 million people in the process.

In the interim, both sides take to releasing offensive comments on social networking sites, graffiti begins to appear in public places with less than amusing stances on the debate and insults are flung with gusto. Then yesterday, it’s announced that a Hong Konger (where did that come from anyway? The people I know from Hong Kong refer to themselves as Honkies – which let’s face it is far more catchy) has spent $100,000 HKD (around $13,000 USD) taking out adverts in Hong Kong press targeted at mainlanders denouncing them as locusts. The picture is of locusts pouring across the border from Shenzhen and consuming Hong Kong. That chap has been told he’s no longer welcome on the mainland (something he should perhaps have considered before his advert – as most of his business is in China).

Neither side seems ready to back down at the moment, and it all seems faintly ridiculous to the outsider. Yes, it’s true that mainlanders sometimes aren’t as worldly as the people of Hong Kong, it’s no big surprise – most Chinese people are only just learning to integrate with themselves let alone the outside world – isolation does that to you. And yes it’s true that Chinese people are buying up much of Hong Kong making the place more expensive to live in than it once was – and it is very, very expensive.

The bad behaviour on both sides continues to escalate - this horribly offensive advert is a slap in the face of an emerging nation and its 1.3 billion citizens.

But the flip side is, that China is Hong Kong’s biggest draw and biggest money maker. Chinese citizens spend millions of dollars every day in the stores of Hong Kong, Chinese companies list on the Hong Kong stock exchange drawing billions in investments and fees that in theory trickle down the ladder in some part to Hong Kong’s citizens by way of spending and taxation.

The deadlock needs breaking before things get truly out of control, China for its part has left Hong Kong alone as a Special Administrative Region honoring the deal made with the British when they left. But if this slightly sad row continues Beijing may feel it has no choice but to intervene to save face. So it’s time for these siblings to admit that despite their differences, they’re both better off for each other and that shaking hands and working together is better than fighting in public.

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21 thoughts on “Hong Kong Vs. The Mainland – An Outside Perspective”

You “stole” my topic. Now I need to find something else to blog about tomorrow….

But honestly, the whole story is really ridiculous. I think the Honkies overdo it. While they might be right in criticizing them, they could’ve done it in a different tone. Besides, if you or I had been sitting on the MTR eating a bowl of noodles no one would’ve dared to say anything. And if they had told us to stop eating it would’ve been something along the line “Excuse me Sir, you shouldn’t eat noodles on the MTR. There is a big fine!”. They wouldn’t have told us to go back to our home countries.

I think there’s a substantial amount of jealousy on both sides of the debate – Hong Kong for the fact that it’s the mainlanders who now have the power and the money, and the mainlanders because Hong Kong is nicer than anything on the mainland (at least for the moment). But it would be great to see them sort this out, without it going overboard – both sides of the border have a lot to offer each other, if they’d just take time to see past their differences and start working together to mutual understanding and tolerance.

Actually, I think it’s vice versa. Hong Kong up until 1997 was under British rule so throughout that time the people there developed a smug condescending attitude towards Mainland China. However, after the handover in 1997 and rise of China as an economic powerhouse, the resentment towards Mainlanders in China has grown even stronger. Hong Kong’s current reaction to the Chinese may in large be driven by jealousy and their refusal to accept that China has now risen above them globally and economically. Due to the growing wealth and power of the Chinese who with their disposable income is able to come to Hong Kong to splurg on luxury items whilst the common Hong Kong citizen struggles to makes ends meet. I find it rather amusing though that Hongers would criticize Mainland manners given that Hong Kong etiquette, manners, customer service and social behaviour leaves a lot to be desired for.

following on, you always hear the Hong Kong side saying that if the Mainlanders are so great and wealthy why don’t they go back to the Mainland to shop? This kind of resentment is rather targeted and prejudice since millions of tourist from around the world descend upon Hong Kong every year with the main purpose of shopping yet don’t face the same kind of wrath.

At riskl of being blasted as pro-China, I would also like to add that the Chinese also leaves a lot to be desired for when it comes to etiquette and manners. They shoud start by introducing into their national elementry school curriculum that spitting is extremely vulgar, lining up is the proper thing to do and talking to loudy is impolite… oh and brushing your teeth is a must.

I live on the edge of both worlds in Shenzhen, and I’ve got to be honest – I don’t understand why the Chinese can’t clean up their act, all it would take is some attention on TV to some of the worst habits (like spitting, urinating/defecating in public, failure to queue, etc.) and a “face losing” campaign and all this would be sorted.

The aggro between the mainland and Hong Kong isn’t new – it’s been going on for centuries, but this is the first time the Hong Kong people have had to face it in a long time – I think there’s a lot of over-reaction from them, but I’ve been here on the mainland and there’s not a day that goes by (still!) where I don’t have to bite my tongue over some appalling piece of behaviour. Though I very much enjoyed picking up a guy who tried to walk through me on the subway the other day and using him to push everyone else out of the way, so I could get off – sometimes my baser nature revels in revenge.

I made the mistake of combining HK & Mainland into a single comment regarding CHINA last month and quickly received a verbal “HONG KONG, not china” slap in the face before I could even finish my sentence lol. Is that not like me getting upset for people making the assumption that the US is the US, regardless of the state?! The whole thing seems a bit…excessive in my opinion 🙂

Chinese citizens still can’t head into Hong Kong when they feel like it, they need a visa (unless their hukou is based in Shenzhen) and that’s likely to remain true for a long time. Unless the mainland government decides it’s so annoyed with the rudeness of the current campaign to open the doors and drown Hong Kong in a couple of hundred million folk looking for a better life, but I don’t think it will.

I’m told the “apartness” of Hong Kong was there prior to British occupation too. So I get “HONG KONG not China” to some extent, it’s a bit like “WALES not England” and I hear that from the Welsh often enough. 🙂

Hong Kong’s a great place to visit – unless you’re my brother (he of the lightsaber) who failed to find anywhere he liked to eat in a week spent on the island. (I have no idea how he managed this – the first day I spent in Hong Kong, on technically my second visit, I found plenty of wonderful food and unlike him, I didn’t have a guide book!)

I am not surprised by this inability to get together. Wherever a foreign power controlled land in empire fashion (England, Portugal, Spain, France), when they left, there was tribal warfare, civil war, etc. Mainland China has not yet learned how to respectfully accommodate differences among their 54 (is it?) different ethnic groups that have been living under the same roof for centuries and now they have to try to accommodate an entity that is so culturally different as to feel threatening!
Oh, that such things were simple. If Mainland China and HK China learn to get along, then maybe the Israelis and Palestinians will learn to get along and if that happens then we may even see world peace reign forever.

There’s a certain amount of truth to that, but to be honest – there’s been a long and ongoing row between the two parties that even pre-dates colonisation, and remember that officially both places even use different languages…

This is a good article with good comments, because the growing resentment by Hong Kong citizens toward mainlanders is only getting worse. The paradox, however, is Hong Kong’s growing economic dependence on China. Many do not seem to realize that Hong Kong’s economic survival is becoming more and more dependent on the Chinese economy, including trade in tourism. In other words, they appear to want the profits from tourism, but as they continue to cultivate an “us/them” paradigm, they actually disdain the tourists.

I think that’s often the case in small places which end up with a huge influx of tourists – for example many Greek and Spanish resorts exist for British Tourists, who spend a fortune in local terms but upset everybody through the bad behaviour of some drunken louts.

I find it strange that whenever someone complains on the mainland an angry Chinese person will tell them; “This is China, you should respect our culture and heritage!” but that same Chinese person won’t do the same in other countries that they expect from people in their own.